Forest Marsh with Travellers on a Bank - Jacob van Ruisdael

''Forest Marsh with Travellers on a Bank'' (1640s-1650s), also known as ''The Travellers'', is an

etching Etching is traditionally the process of using strong acid or mordant to cut into the unprotected parts of a metal surface to create a design in intaglio (incised) in the metal. In modern manufacturing, other chemicals may be used on other types ...

by the Dutch Golden Age artist

Jacob van Ruisdael Jacob Isaackszoon van Ruisdael (; 1629 – 10 March 1682) was a Dutch painter, draughtsman, and etcher. He is generally considered the pre-eminent landscape painter of the Dutch Golden Age, a period of great wealth and cultural achi ...

. A few copies are known, including those in the collections of the

British Museum The British Museum is a public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is among the largest and most comprehensive in existence. It docum ...

,British Museum
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Metropolitan Museum of Art The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, colloquially "the Met", is the largest art museum in the Americas. Its permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among 17 curatorial departments. The main building at 1000 ...

in New York, the Rijksprentenkabinet of the

Rijksmuseum Amsterdam The Rijksmuseum () is the national museum of the Netherlands dedicated to Dutch arts and history and is located in Amsterdam. The museum is located at the Museum Square in the borough of Amsterdam South, close to the Van Gogh Museum, the Ste ...

, and

Museum Boymans-van Beuningen Municipal Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen () is an art museum in Rotterdam in the Netherlands. The name of the museum is derived from the two most important collectors of Frans Jacob Otto Boijmans and Daniël George van Beuningen. It is located at ...

Rotterdam Rotterdam ( , , , lit. ''The Dam on the River Rotte'') is the second largest city and municipality in the Netherlands. It is in the province of South Holland, part of the North Sea mouth of the Rhine–Meuse–Scheldt delta, via the ''"N ...

. The cumulus clouds in the late states of the etching have been added later and are not by Ruisdael himself. Etching expert

Georges Duplessis Georges Duplessis (19 March 1834 – 26 March 1899) was a French art historian and curator. Outside France he is best known for his book ''The Wonders of Engraving'', translated into English in 1871. He was curator of the Print Room of the Bib ...

singled out ''The Travellers'' and ''The Cornfield'' as unrivalled illustrations of Ruisdael's genius. Ruisdael's pupil

Meindert Hobbema Meindert Lubbertszoon Hobbema (bapt. 31 October 1638 – 7 December 1709) was a Dutch Golden Age painter of landscapes, specializing in views of woodland, although his most famous painting, ''The Avenue at Middelharnis'' (1689, National Galler ...

painted two copies of this etching. One, dated 1662, is in the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne. A young

John Constable John Constable (; 11 June 1776 – 31 March 1837) was an English landscape painter in the Romanticism, Romantic tradition. Born in Suffolk, he is known principally for revolutionising the genre of landscape painting with his pictures of Dedha ...

said in 1797 that he wanted to copy the work; if he did, none of his copies have survived. When Constable died he owned four Ruisdael etchings, one of which was ''The Travellers''. The etching is catalogue number E13 in Slive's 2001 catalogue raisonné of Ruisdael, Hollstein 4.III and Bartsch I.313.4.

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References

* * * {{ACArt Etchings by Jacob van Ruisdael